Coach, Don’t Manage: Working Together For A Healthier Safety Culture

If you’ve ever read my blog or seen one of my posts on LinkedIn, you’ll know that I firmly believe in coaching, not managing. But what do I actually mean by this?

I am a big advocate of honest, open communication in the workplace, no matter your role because I know it can make or break a business. This goes double for those responsible for safety, as communication can often be the difference between life or death.

Long gone are the days when it was fine for safety managers to walk around, clipboard in hand, shouting orders and telling people off for not wearing their hard hats. To have any impact, these managers should instead be asking themselves why that person wasn’t wearing their hard hat in the first place.

Coaching comes in; a more diplomatic, empathic way of doing things to get the best out of your team.

However, I know this management style doesn’t always come easily. The good news is that these skills can be learnt, and with an open mind and a willingness to change, safety managers can shift the way they do things and ensure a safer workplace.

Change things up

Sometimes, when things don’t seem to be working, a change in mindset is all it takes.

Empowering people to reach their conclusion, make their own decisions and take responsibility for their actions can be far more effective than telling them the answer.

Rather than drilling the ‘right’ answer into employees, managers should be focused on empowering others to make their own reasoned choices and make daily safety tasks subconscious.

This subverts the idea that employees should ‘do as they’re told and instead equips them with the ability to act independently and dynamically, freeing managers to take a more effective big picture approach rather than getting bogged down in the day-to-day.

Get to know your people.

I can’t stress this enough. If you don’t know who your people are, what makes them tick, and their ‘why’, your efforts will always be in vain.

Everyone is different and has their reasons for doing what they do, and something that works for one person will not work for another. This is why cut and paste safety briefings are so ineffective.

You will never learn anything about your team by locking yourself in an office and waiting for them to ask for help. Showing you care, engaging with colleagues, asking questions – not just about the workplace but about their lives too – and offering guidance is a far more effective strategy.

Take time to walk and talk with co-workers and keep them up to date with developments. It shows that you care about them as people can work miracles though it takes commitment and patience.

Your involvement and genuine interest in who they are will result in an engaged team that will want to work with you and take your advice on board. Building relationships is a superpower that not enough managers take advantage of.

Ensure your employees have the information they need

As a safety manager, it is your responsibility to make sure that colleagues have access to the latest safety regulations and procedures and the relevant training that will help them build a stronger safety culture together.

This sounds easier said than done, however. We all know how easy it is to throw a few PowerPoint presentations together and call it ‘safety training’. But unfortunately, such training is rarely put together with the worker in mind, and most workers will zone out before they take it in.

When putting together training materials, you should know who your audience is, their pain points, and which training method they’ll respond to best. Don’t overwhelm them with things they don’t need to know.

By giving employees relevant information and training so that they can put it into practice, you’ll be equipping them to respond to situations safely and dynamically, ultimately reducing the time and financial cost of micro-managing.

Show, don’t tell

Think about coaching this way: you are like a parent who needs to teach their children the life skills they need to figure out how to do things independently. Although it feels more straightforward and quicker to tell someone exactly what to do and how to do it, you’re just creating further problems down the line.

With this method, you’ll more than likely have to give specific instructions repeatedly. This is unpleasant and frustrating for everyone involved: no one likes being told what to do, especially repeatedly. They’ll tune out.

Micromanaging people discourages initiative, engagement, and taking responsibility for one’s actions.

Instead, here are a few things you should focus on:

First, listen to what your team says and learn their pain points. Listening will help you come up with more helpful solutions.
Ask open questions, don’t just assume things – if you need more information or clarification, don’t be afraid to ask. Similarly, some individuals find it difficult to express their concerns or might not know where to start in conversations. But, again, asking the right questions can lead to a more fruitful discussion.
Give feedback. This is essential for improvement as it helps things move along. Focus on constructive feedback.
Show empathy. When we struggle or make mistakes, being shown empathy helps us unblock, move on, and learn. Showing empathy will help guide your team out of the slump and closer to your desired goal.

Use mistakes as learning opportunities.

Everyone makes mistakes. The safety industry itself was built on learning from our mistakes, so it’s only fair to continue to use mistakes as learning opportunities rather than failings.

No one wants accidents to happen, but when they do, your goal is to understand why the incident happened and work with the people involved to prevent it from happening again.

As a safety manager, you need to accept that mistakes happen. However, you should also do your best to use them as learning opportunities rather than automatically resorting to discipline.

If the same person continues to make the same mistakes, there is probably a bigger issue. Perhaps the person does not fit into your safety culture. But if it’s the first time, you have a golden opportunity to look at the circumstances around the incident and work with the person to make sure it does not happen again.

As a safety coach, your goal should always be to work with people towards better safety practices, not against them.

Keep investing in yourself.

As with any skill, practice makes perfect, which goes for coaching. No one is born a brilliant coach, and there should be no shame in admitting that you need improvement.

Many managers might not even be aware that they lack skills, and some might even think they are great coaches when the reality is different. As coaches and leaders, we need to develop the kind of self-awareness that will help us improve.

Checking in from time to time, asking for feedback from teams or direct managers, and keeping up with training needs is paramount for building a successful career that helps people create safer workplaces.

Get advice from the experts.

I’ve spent the last two decades working closely with safety managers and supervisors to teach them the skills they need to help develop their people and get the best out of them, ultimately ensuring a safer environment.

If you think you might benefit from learning the skills to be more coach-like, get in touch.

Why health and safety should be considered in the hiring process

When they hear ‘health and safety’, most people – particularly managers – immediately jump to fire drills, risk assessments and box-ticking. But health and safety in the workplace is far more than that.

A positive health and safety culture can improve productivity, profitability, client and stakeholder satisfaction, lower staff turnover, and so much more. It’s key to get it right, and part of that is bringing in new staff that share a commitment to building and upholding that culture.

Good health and safety practices ultimately benefit your whole workforce, whether through procedures that directly impact them or by reducing staff absences creating a more efficient site. In addition, research shows workplaces that prioritise health and safety have more productive workers. Therefore, bringing in individuals who have the same emphasis and commitment to health and safety is advantageous to your entire team.

Attitude to risk

A commitment or passion for something is hard to ascertain from a CV alone, and understandably, skills and knowledge relevant to the role are usually prioritised over health and safety.

Nevertheless, including one or two safety-relevant questions in the interview process can be hugely beneficial and can help build a team dedicated to working towards a strong health and safety culture. In addition, interviews are the perfect place to find out more about your candidates as people, beyond their CV, especially their attitude to risk.

Of course, you aren’t going to turn down a prime candidate because they’re a fan of skydiving. But if they’re consistently brushing over health and safety details when asked specific questions, it begins to build a risk profile that you can use to determine a candidate’s suitability.

When a person is being blasé about health and safety and procedures in an interview, you can bet that they’ll be taking risks and not following policies in the workplace. So excluding that risk at the interview stage will undoubtedly create a safer workplace.

Knowledge and qualifications

CVs are limited in detail they can give, which is why asking health and safety questions in the interview process is crucial. However, the information they can provide goes beyond qualifications. You can use your questions to find out what hands-on experience they’ve got, either at handling emergencies or setting up procedures to minimise risk in the first place.

Opening a discussion around health and safety allows you to explore their knowledge so you can be sure if you bring them into your team, they’re committed to building and maintaining a health and safety culture.

Value led interviewing

There is a growing trend of employees wanting to work for companies that share their values and beliefs. Having questions in an interview that explore an employee’s values and allow you to share yours makes it far more likely that you’ll attract new starters who have the same commitment to health and safety.

If your staff truly believe in creating a health and safety culture, it becomes far easier to embed in day to day activities.

How can you include health and safety in the process?

Structured, competency-based questions

Often the success of an interview comes down to the questions asked. By using structured, competency-based questions, you can probe their health and safety experience, understanding and qualifications.

The exact questions you ask can be tailored to the job and industry you operate. For example, you could ask them to tell you about how they implemented health and safety procedures in their previous role, or you could broaden it to ask them to explain a time when they had to consider health and safety. Both will very quickly give you an indication of their involvement and understanding of health and safety.

Included in all interviews regardless of level

This is crucial. For a health and safety culture to become embedded in everything you do, it must come from the top. A policy stating health and safety questions will be asked at all interviews will start to help this happen.

It’s no good having entry-level employees who are passionate about health and safety, only for a manager to put an end to it because they’ve got no interest.

Accessible interviews

Health and safety are more than procedures; it also covers employees and their working conditions and needs.

A great way to attract the right people to your business is through demonstrating you mean what you say. Asking someone for an interview and immediately asking about any accessibility needs and considerations that need to be considered does just that. Actions speak far louder than words and you taking the first step shows just how important that health and safety culture is to you.

Building a safety culture with the right people

Attitudes towards health and safety are difficult to change, however, if you are serious about cultivating a strong health and safety culture, bringing in people with the right perspective and knowledge.

It goes further than that, however. It’s about setting up the structure and expectation from the start – asking at all levels about their experience and making sure your interview process is truly inclusive. Then, when you start asking a few questions designed to probe that area, you’ll be in an excellent position to make the right decision for your business.

If you’re not sure where to start, get in touch. I’ve been working with businesses of all shapes and sizes for decades, helping them achieve a broader, more inclusive safety culture. I can help you identify the right questions to ask in your interview to ensure you’re hiring the right people.

Get in touch using the contact form above, or send me a WhatsApp message or text on 07814 203 977.

Motivating workers to report near-misses

Recently, I ran a poll on my LinkedIn page, asking how easy managers felt it was to get workers to report near-misses. Out of 296 votes, 42% said they found it not so easy, with 34% saying they found it challenging. Just 24% of people reported that it was easy to get people to report close encounters at work.

Of course, a LinkedIn poll can’t be considered an in-depth survey, but I was surprised at the high number of people who said they were struggling to get their employees to report near-misses.

David Cant - Health and Safety Professional

Let’s delve a little deeper into the subject and look at ways to make the reporting of near-misses clearer and easier.

What is a near-miss?

To get your workers to report near-misses, you first need to identify what exactly a near-miss is. From the comments on my poll, I’ve come to realise that there are a few schools of thought on the subject.

I feel we need to start by differentiating between ‘accidents’ and ‘incidents’. In my experience, the difference between these is that an accident = an event that causes injury or death, and an incident = a breakdown in health and safety that did not result in injury but highlighted a flaw in health and safety.

This outlook is backed by the Health and Safety Executive, who we can safely assume are the arbiters of definitions within health and safety.

The section of their website, which discusses accidents and investigations, discusses various terms – including accident, incident, and near-miss – which can help clarify these various ‘adverse events.

According to the HSE, ‘accident’ can be defined as an ‘event which results in injury or ill-health.

Meanwhile, ‘Incident’ is broken down into two definitions, ‘near-miss and ‘undesired circumstance’.

near-misses are defined as ‘an event not causing harm, but which has the potential to cause injury or ill health.’
Undesired circumstances, meanwhile, are defined as ‘ a set of conditions or circumstances that have the potential to cause injury or ill health.’

The final term is ‘dangerous occurrences, which are defined as ‘one of a number of specific, reportable adverse events, as defined in the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations 2013 (RIDDOR)’. The Regulations use ‘near-miss and ‘dangerous occurrence’ interchangeably.

Under RIDDOR, employers and those in control of work are legally bound to report near-misses as ‘dangerous occurrences. Thankfully, the HSE has supplied a handy list of reportable events within the regulations under this definition. Some good examples include:

‘Any explosion or fire caused by an electrical short circuit or overload (including those resulting from accidental damage to the electrical plant) which either:
- (a)results in the stoppage of the plant involved for more than 24 hours; or
- (b)causes a significant risk of death.’
And ‘the collapse, overturning or failure of any load-bearing part of any lifting equipment, other than an accessory for lifting.’

So, although some might think there is a lack of clarity in the term ‘near-miss, the HSE is pretty clear cut on what it sees as near-misses, as well as what needs to be reported.

What are the reasons for not reporting a near-miss?

There is any number of reasons why an employee might feel uncomfortable reporting a near-miss.

They are afraid of blame

The worker might not have been following standard procedures, or perhaps previous events have led them to believe that they will face punishment for the incident, even if it wasn’t their fault.

They don’t believe it will happen again, or it wasn’t that bad

The worker might feel that it is unlikely to happen again and is not worth reporting. Many employees often feel a sense of invulnerability at work, unaware that simply being ‘good at your job’ or having plenty of experience doesn’t make you invincible.

They don’t believe anything will be done

If a company has a lax safety culture, employees might not think reporting near-misses is worth the effort. Unless you make a real effort to take employee concerns into account and act on them, this can become a real problem.

The only way to honestly know why employees are not engaging with the safety culture is by making an effort to get to know your workers as people rather than statistics. I’ve discussed the ‘human factor’ in previous blogs and what you can do to overcome the unpredictability of people at work.

Why is it so important that workers report near-misses?

Outside of RIDDOR requirements, employees must report near-misses as part of a greater health and safety effort.

Health and safety is more than just putting up notices on the board and filling out risk assessments. The only way to effectively push down accidents and safety failures in your business is by implementing a culture in which safety is a top priority for everyone, from directors to employees to sub-contractors.

Only by encouraging everyone to participate in this culture will you reap the rewards of a truly safe company. Employees must see their safety and the safety of others as a top priority.

Once you have staff openly reporting the near-misses and safety failures they see, you’ll be able to properly analyse the gaps in your safety strategy and improve it, avoiding potentially much more severe failures in the future. The more information you receive from those on the ground, the more data you have to work with.

Encouraging workers to report near-misses

So, what steps can you take to ensure your employees feel comfortable and correct in reporting near-misses?

Recognition over rewards

The first port of call for many health and safety managers looking to encourage a certain behaviour is incentives. This seems to be simple human psychology: offer a reward for a particular act.

However, these rewards often do not work the way you would expect them to and can lead to unintended consequences, such as over-reporting on frivolous things to get the reward.

Instead of taking the easy road with incentives, you should invest in recognition. When employees bring a near-miss to your attention, recognise both the risk and the employee. Take visible steps to close the gap in your safety systems, and do what you can to ensure that the employee feels like they are being taken seriously.

Highlight a particular near-miss in your safety briefings

Often, employees might fail to report a near-miss simply because they didn’t know they were supposed to report it. As I mentioned earlier, there can be some uncertainty around what counts as a near-miss and what doesn’t.

By taking a recent, or even theoretical, example – such as equipment failure or a close call with a forklift – you can clarify what employees need to watch out for and report.

Please keep it simple

Even employees engaged with your safety culture don’t want to spend hours filling out forms. They’ve got better things to do. A simple hotline or email address for near-miss reporting is all you need. The system must be short and straightforward if you have any hope of employees engaging with it.

Never punish reporting

Just as you should not over-reward, you also should not punish those who come forward to report safety failings. All punishing responsible employees will do is make them less likely to report near-misses in the future.

If the safety failure was the employee’s fault, you should make sure you do what you can to identify what went wrong and educate them to prevent it from happening again. Safety coaching is a fantastic alternative to disciplinary action.

A safer workplace

Once again, this comes down to a matter of encouraging a better workplace safety culture. By ensuring that employees are engaged and feel that coming forward is worthwhile, you will find that more and more employees report near-misses because they genuinely care about making their workplace safer.

I’ve worked with hundreds of companies over the years to improve their safety culture and get employees engaged. If you think I might be able to help you, send me a text or WhatsApp message on 07814 203 977, or get in touch via my contact form.

Competent or Not: Who’s Working on Your Site?

To most right-minded individuals, ‘incompetent’ is quite the insult. Incompetence implies uselessness at a given task, possibly even dangerousness, and most of us – quite rightly – would take serious offence.

In health and safety, however, competence is actually a technical term. Describing someone as competent in a health and safety sense clearly states they have the right training, skills, experience, and knowledge to carry out a given task that could be risky safely. Someone without the required amount of any of the above, or lack of physical ability to do the job, wouldn’t be considered ‘competent’ to do the job. No insult intended.

Competence is vital to health and safety and managing risk safely, especially on construction sites or in potentially dangerous industrial settings. Employers and those with a health and safety remit are responsible for ensuring anyone hired to carry out tasks – including contractors – is competent.

Competence to carry out a job should not be confused with assigning a competent person. This is a different but less important part of risk management and involves assigning someone in a general sense – not for a specific task – who has the skills, knowledge and experience to manage health and safety. It’s worth noting that this person doesn’t need to be an employee of the business. Veritas Consulting offers several cost-effective external Competent Person packages for almost any budget if that’s what you’re after.

In this blog, I’ll be discussing competency and what you as an employer or health and safety manager can do to ensure those working for you are competent, to keep your workers safe and your company out of legal hot water should things go awry.

Ensuring competency

Health and safety legislation states that employers and those with health and safety responsibilities must ensure that workers are competent before allowing them to commence work.

There are a few ways to guarantee a competency, but these will differ depending on whether the worker in question is an employee or a contractor.

Ensuring employees are competent

According to the Health and Safety Executive: ‘someone’s level of competence only needs to be proportionate to their job and place of work’. Essentially, the person doing the job at hand needs to illustrate they are equipped with everything they need to do that job safely. Someone who has spent their life working in an office will (probably) be competent at their own job but won’t have the first idea where to start when asked to tile a roof. The reverse is also true.

Hopefully, when employing the person, you will have already been able to determine that they possess the right level of physical ability and the best attitude to perform at a safe level so that you can build on that foundation.

Of course, while it’s always a point in their favour, you can’t expect candidates – especially newer, younger ones – to have on the job experience or the exact qualifications or certificates. Hiring candidates who have already completed courses relevant to the job does mean that they can hit the ground running, as it were, but on-the-job training should be a priority for everyone. By training employees yourself or using a trusted safety trainer, you know for sure that they’ve been taught what they need to know and are getting the right qualifications.

Another vital part of competency, experience, comes with time and practice. None of us was born with a hammer in our hands, of course. However, with the right foundation and temperament, employees can learn the ropes on smaller, safer jobs or by shadowing more experienced employees before taking the reins themselves.

Regular risk assessments are key to ensuring workers without the right skills or experience aren’t left out of their depth. They will allow you to identify any training you need to offer or improvements you need to make.

Ensuring employee competence isn’t a matter of checking off a checklist. It’s an ongoing joint task between you and your employee, in which you provide the training and access to skills they need, and they implement what they’ve learned safely and sensibly.

Ensuring competency in contractors

With contractors, guaranteeing competency is a little bit different.

Although the contractor isn’t your employee, you become responsible for their safety by bringing them onto the site. This potentially makes you equally liable for accidents caused by their poor behaviour or lack of skills.

Luckily, it’s a little more straightforward to identify competency in contractors. Here, there is a checklist to follow. According to the HSE, you should ask any potential contractor the following questions to ensure they’re competent enough to carry out work on your site.

How will work be managed? Who will be responsible for each task, who will supervise, and what checks are carried out on equipment and materials?
Will subcontractors be used? How will the contractor check that they are competent? This will vary based on the risk and complexity of the work.
Can they show a record of recent health and safety performance? E.g. a number of accidents, ill health, HSE enforcement action etc.
Do they have a written health and safety policy? If the contractor has fewer than five employees, this isn’t legally required.
Do they have any independent assessment of their competence, or are they members of a trade association or professional body? Both of these are great ways to show competence.
Do they have examples of existing risk assessments? Again, the contractor will likely only have this if they have more than five employees.
Do they have a safety method statement? This isn’t a legal requirement but shows positive investment in health and safety.
Can they show relevant qualifications or proof of skills and experience?
Do they have relevant liability insurance?
Vitally, what health and safety information and training do they offer their employees, and can they provide records of this training?

Any contractor worth their salt will be happy to provide all the above to guarantee their ability to do the job. They should, in theory, also be happy to provide testimonials from other clients who have had positive experiences. The contractor wants to work for you and know that minimising any concerns is crucial.

By following the above checklist when working with contractors, you can minimise the risk of those who aren’t equipped properly to set foot on your site and make you liable for any incidents.

The experience paradox

Let’s say you’re required to carry out a specific type of work at height. You have a number of highly skilled and very competent workers, but none of them has experience carrying out this type of job. Instead, you seek out contractors who can do the work for you.

You have two options. A friend of a friend recommended company A. They haven’t provided any record of qualifications, training, method statements, and risk assessment consisting of a quick run around with a clipboard. They’ve got their CSCS cards, but not much else. Their reasoning? They’ve been in business for forty years. They’re experienced.

Option A, meanwhile, are happy to provide everything you need. They’re registered with CHAS and ConstructionLine. Their workers recently completed a Work at Height refresher course, PPE training, rescue training, and training in mobile elevated work platforms (MEWPS) and PASMA. Unfortunately, they’ve only been in business for a year.

Of course, seeing it laid out like that makes the right choice obvious.

Option B, despite their lack of experience compared to A, are more competent. But too often, those in a position of hiring subcontractors put a huge emphasis on experience alone rather than all factors. Of course, experience is important, but being able to prove that ability, with external, relevant, independent proof – is much more important.

Remember: just because someone has been doing the job for 40 years doesn’t mean they’ve been doing it right. Luck can be powerful, but it runs out.

The final word

Competency is crucial, but it can often be an afterthought. It’s important to consider all factors when determining competency and remember that just because someone is sensible and highly experienced in one particular area does not mean they are competent in another.

It’s up to you as an employer or health and safety manager to always check for and monitor competency, as it’s one of the most vital tools in ensuring the safety of those on-site and minimising your own liability.

I have two decades of experience in safety and risk management, including advising on competency and more. Can I help you? Please send me a message on 07814 203 977, or use the contact form below to book a 15-minute virtual call. To talk things through.

Set your sights higher with safety leadership coaching

Safety and risk management at work is easy.

When you spot someone flouting the rules, all you need to do is pull them aside, show them your laminated safety posters on the office corkboard, give them a telling off, then send them on their way with a newfound passion for safety.

Except that’s not really how it works at all.

Let’s be honest: no one has ever changed how they do things because someone told them off. Very rarely has someone skipped out of a meeting with the health and safety boss inspired to change their ways.

Just telling the worker what they did wrong isn’t going to do much because, in reality, they already knew what they were doing was wrong. They decided to do things their way for a reason, and it’s your job to figure out what that reason was.

The human factor, which I’ve discussed previously, is one of the most unpredictable parts of risk management on construction sites and beyond. It’s the health and safety manager’s responsibility to identify the triggers for rule-breaking and tackle them at the source.

Telling v motivating

No one wants to be told what to do. Very few people respond well to orders, especially when they’re being reprimanded.

Sometimes, pulling an employee up on something is an unfortunate necessity. If their actions put others at risk, or it isn’t the first time they’ve flouted the rules, then discipline is important.

However, if you find that all you’re ever doing is challenging people for breaking the rules, or it’s your go-to tool for enforcing safety policies, then you might be coming at things from the wrong angle. Too much modern health and safety is built around tackling safety behaviours after issues appear, rather than encouraging the right behaviours and skills from the start.

Ultimately, people won’t do something (or won’t stop doing something they want to do) without a good reason. So how do you find the right motivation?

The right motivation

To find this motivation, you need to go above and beyond the standard ‘person with a clipboard’ persona. It would be best if you moved away from the traditional compliance-based approach (‘stop doing this because the law says so’) to identifying motivational triggers and apply a coach-like approach instead.

There’s no one size-fix-all for creating a truly effective safety culture in the workplace, especially when it comes to motivation. Every person’s motivational ‘sweet spot’ will be different, and different people need different triggers.

To find and encourage the motivators on your site, you could look beyond what isn’t working and look at what is. Why? Can you repeat it?

Make sure you’re reviewing people as individuals rather than a single monolith. Then, you can provide real supportive feedback on what they’re doing well and what they could do better. I’ve blogged previously about how to properly motivate staff to want to be safer.

These strategies and others will allow you to coach your team more into putting thought into health and safety. However, to see real changes in your staff, you might want to consider setting your sights slightly higher.

Focus on leadership

One of the worst mistakes a health and safety manager can make is assuming that only the workers on the ground need to be thinking about safety.

From my experience in the safety industry, I know first-hand that some of the most powerful changes come from above. I’m not talking about managers coming to the site and throwing their weight around. I’m talking about real changes from the top down.

For a business to have a truly effective safety culture, everyone needs to play a part: this includes managers and directors. When a company’s leadership shows real support for safety in their messaging and behaviours, it cascades down to the rest of the business. How can directors expect their employees to care about health and safety if they don’t?

When management shows a real, sincere commitment to safety, it encourages others to do the same. Workers do what managers do.

As the health and safety professional in your business, you should be putting at least as much effort into targeting the safety behaviours of management and leadership as you are into workers’ behaviour.

By implementing a safety leadership coaching strategy, you might soon find that you’re fighting fewer fires, and employees are more receptive to your risk management policies.

Hopefully, you can work directly with a leadership team, letting them know about the effect their sincere input could have on the business’s safety culture. However, you may have a tougher job if your business doesn’t put much stock in psychological safety.

For the most part, however, leaders will usually want to do what they can to improve safety when they know the benefits. A stronger, more well-rounded safety culture doesn’t just mean safer workers, but fewer potential legal issues and a much lower impact on efficiency, saving time and money. A safer business is a healthier business.

There are multiple ways to get leadership involved in safety. Directors should be sitting in on important safety briefings, taking notes, and showing a real interest in improving safety and wellbeing across the business.

Leaders are often unaware of how their leadership skills, communications, behaviour and even their body language can affect employees’ outlook, especially when it comes to safety. No one wants to work for a company that doesn’t care. This is why safety leadership coaching can be so powerful.

Via proper leadership coaching, management and supervisors can identify their own safety weaknesses. They can also learn the real benefits of better company culture, encouraging them to take an active role. Being more curious and asking questions. Once a leadership team is seen to be taking a sincere interest in safety, those throughout the company have a reason to do the same.

Bring in the big guns

I know first-hand how difficult it can sometimes be to instigate change from within a business. This is even more obvious when it comes to working with leaders: directors and management have a thousand and one things to deal with, and it can be hard to get face time to tackle the issues. Sometimes, you can be too close to the problem, and your pleas fall on deaf ears.

This is where external safety leadership coaching can make a big difference. By bringing in a third party, you can schedule coaching sessions in advance, creating a sense of obligation, and making it more difficult to avoid the issue.

Third-party safety consultants with a coach-like approach such as myself can also bring a fresh perspective, helping you and those in positions of leadership to identify issues with a safety culture that you may not have even thought about.

If there’s a deadlock when it comes to safety leadership, an unbiased consultant can help break it and get everyone back to the important work of improving safety.

Getting leaders involved in safety can be one of the most powerful tools in a safety and risk manager’s arsenal. When directors and managers show real willing and involvement in safety at work, it inspires others to do the same, allowing them to internalise the teachings and creating a sustainable safety culture.

I have two decades of experience in safety and risk management which includes coaching managers and supervisors to become good leaders. If you are curious about how I can help you, send me a message on 07814 203 977, or use the contact form below or if you prefer book a 15-minute virtual call. to talk things through.